Lights, camera, action—the three famous components of a movie. As an aspiring movie director, Todor Pophristic ’24 prioritizes the latter. Whether it’s by riding around town on his bike until he finds the perfect set, or filming on his mom’s iPhone, Pophristic has always chased after his dreams, rather than waiting around for them to be realized. Taking this initiative has allowed Pophristic to expand his filmmaking skills and create a repertoire of his own films that began in the fifth grade. He’s also explored his love of visual arts through other mediums, evident in his role as Editor-in-Chief of The Ivy and his previous position as a staff writer for the Tower’s Arts and Entertainment section, frequently writing movie reviews. In college, he hopes to display the knowledge he’s gathered throughout his experience directing and collaborating by getting into big film festivals, and eventually turning this passion into a career.

What inspired you to start filmmaking?

I started mainly out of boredom. In 5th grade, I was at my cousin's house and we had this app where you could create movies on my mom’s phone. And, after that there was the “Walnut Lane Film Festival” in 6th grade, which made me think, “oh, I should keep doing this”. [The film festival] died after COVID, [but] just last year, me and my friend Finn Neuneier [’24] re-started that for the middle schoolers.

How would you describe your creative process? Do you start off with the story or how you want it to look, etc.?

It depends. It can always just start with a specific image I have in mind for a scene, it can start with a line of dialogue, a character. It starts with one specific point, and it grows from there. I don’t know how much brainstorming I have to do, it’s really over the course of you know weeks, I have a few ideas in mind, and as I’m walking, thinking, just going about my day, they’ll usually expand to the point where I can sit down and start writing a script and expanding upon them that way.

Is there any movie director’s style who you take inspiration from? Would you say it’s more their aesthetic/filming technique that you appreciate, or their storylines?

I’d say generally the filmmakers I’m inspired by, Safdie brothers are a big inspiration, so is Refn, Guy Ritchie, and a few others. I like really anxiety-inducing movies, you know something that keeps me on the edge of my seat, very suspenseful, and generally these movies are also about the underbelly of society, things that are usually not cultures and subsections of society that are really looked at.

Do you cater your movies to that same specific audience? What genre do you think your films fit into the most?

Definitely. I mean, I could say crime is a framework, but generally the majority of my movies, most of the time aren’t spent on the actual crime, the actual violence, but what comes before and after, which is kind of a more psychological thriller-drama, it would be more in that category. I guess what I’m trying to do, and what a lot of these filmmakers are trying to do, is give the audience a character or scenario that is vile, that is disturbing, and that the audience can immediately react and say “that’s bad, that’s evil”. Then slowly as you get to know the characters and immerse yourself in the narrative, you kind of see yourself in those characters, you see what you do on the day-to-day, the immoral actions that you have and that you go through with. It’s like a self-reflection, through awful extremes.

As a student director, how do you manage to balance your time between school, script-writing, and filming/directing?

I’d say I spend the majority of my free time, when I’m not like doing homework and stuff. It’s not work, you know what I mean. So, in the same way that somebody would log onto a video game and play for like three hours, you would be like “how do you make time for that?” And obviously, you make time for fun, and for me, film is fun. So I spend a lot of my time either, writing scripts, or planning out things. I have a notebook where I’ll write down all of my ideas when I’m going through brainstorming, whether that be images I have in mind, characters, lines of dialogue.

How does the budget work for student films? I noticed in your most recent film, “21st Century Spunk,” there’s quite a lot of props and setting changes, so how do you manage all that? Do you collaborate with anyone, or do you source most of it?

It’s kind of two things. One, is I have a minimum wage job, and I spend a lot of that money, I put it into savings for props, camera equipment, and whatnot. But, a lot of the time, when it comes down to location and props, it’s all free. It’s all free, you just need to ask the right people. I see a lot of student filmmakers resort to the people around them. In the work I’m gonna be doing moving forward, and in some films I’ve already done thus far that just haven’t been released yet, I’ve been using “Backstage” or “Actors Breakdown”, which is where you can get real actors for free, who are looking to build up their resumé. But it’s the same for locations and everything, you just need to be looking at what’s interesting. Can you find someone at your school who has a farm? Can you find someone at your school who’s really rich and has a mansion you can film in? Or, in my case, for “Téte-a-téte:” for example, I was biking around for a long while, just trying to find a parking lot that has one light shining down, which is, the set piece. And generally just a lot of asking people, a lot of nagging people, being annoying, and you can kind of get what you want for free.

Having a soundtrack is a big part of a good movie, in fact, many movies are most memorable for their soundtracks. How do you incorporate music into your own films? Do you ever run into issues with the loyalties to songs/ownership?

So we have two different tracks. For YouTube, where we show movies with students in our high school, we choose whatever songs we want. How we find those songs is through the creative process itself, I’m usually listening to music, and the songs fit in very well from the beginning, they’re not added in after, they’re not an afterthought, it’s something that has been kind of planned from the beginning, what music we use. But then when we’re sending it off to festivals, there are a few different websites we use that let us get copyright-free music.

Your latest film, “21st Century Spunk,” is made up of multiple short stories. How were you able to keep a cohesive feel throughout, while the stories were changing?

I think by virtue of the mindset I was in junior year, as with anybody that’s been making movies, music, or any kind of visual art, your art is gonna be a reflection of where you are at mentally, your perspective at the time. And by virtue of my perspective being how it was, and all those films being made in such a short period of time together, over the course of a few months, although they all differ a lot, in terms of genre and sometimes even visual style, they all have elements that connect them in terms of theme, narrative, and just kind of the personality of the film. I feel like a lot of the time, people think about the purpose of the film and they don’t think about personality. All those movies have a very similar personality and that’s my personality, where I was at junior year.

Any advice for aspiring directors?

Don’t try to perfect everything, don’t wait for the opportunity to arise for you to make a movie. You have everything you need. Even if you think you don’t, you do. You can make a movie on your iPhone even, you can’t wait for everything to be perfect for you to start making your movie. Things are going to fall apart, all of these movies that I’ve made, even “21st Century Spunk”, there have been a myriad of issues that have come about in the process of production. And I’ve built up a lot of resources and connections, and even then, I run into a lot of problems. You are going to run into problems inevitably. Don’t try to wait for the perfect moment when the stars align to make your movie, because you can make it right now. And then after that make as many movies as you can. Don’t wait for opportunities to arise for you, just create them.

What are your current plans for the future? What do you hope to do with your love for film?

I’m going to do this as a career. I know that for a fact. I know a lot of people talk about living their dreams, like “my dream is to be a lawyer,” “my dream is to be a doctor.” I’m in a very lucky position where I’ve known what my dream is since I was in 5th grade, which is to make movies. And an even luckier position is that I’ve been able to live my dream since fifth grade, because I’ve been able to make movies the entire time. So really I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, and I know that if I keep working as hard as I am and whatnot, I’ll be able to support myself with this. For specific goals, I’d really like to go to university, get into some significant film festivals like Austin, or South by Southwest, where I can sell myself.